Prescott Lake Watson: Staten Family

I absolutely love this family, Julia has been one of my biggest supporters since the 4runner rolled back into Phoenix. At Old Timers which is a banquet my husbands company holds every summer she was telling everyone how I should be their photographer. I have come quite a long way with her sweet family and I am so glad they have stuck with me as I have been growing. I have loved watching them grow as a family as well. I was so excited that I got to come hang out with them after sweet baby Ronin was born.

This year for their session Julia wanted to venture out of town and to a lake, the original lake she liked needed an ATV to get to but I think Lake Watson was the perfect place for their session. I am ready to go back up there again! Really I am up for any adventure out of the Valley! Here are a few of my favorites from their session!

Chandler Newborn: Baby Brooke

Who here loves newborns? I know I do and when covid started I was like wait am I going to still get to do my newborns. I was super sad, but I am so thankful for the parents who still trust me to come capture their newborn.

Sweet baby Brooke slept through her whole session. She was awake right after dad changed her clothes, and for a quick second on the changing table. How adorable is baby Brooke and her parents. I loved every minute of this session. I also got to see her this past weekend and she is growing up so fast I wish babies would just slow it down a bit.

Here are a few of my of my favorites from Brooke’s newborn session along with her film!

Water User: Why you should trust your Photographer

This mama has trusted me with every shoot we have done together. Everything from style to location to my creative eye for shooting. All of her family picture I have styled them head to toe. Lucky for her she has had most of their outfits in their closets but you don’t have to have a picture perfect closet, I can send you links to outfits that should work for your family. I am also currently working on building up a client closet with outfits for mom. When ever you book a session I will send you my style guide, if you book a full family session I will go even further to help you find outfits.

I also have quite a few locations that I love to shoot at and I will help you to find a location that will work for your family. I want to make sure everything is exactly how you had hoped. I want you to print these photos and have them displayed in your house so you can enjoy them and friends and family can boast about how gorgeous your family is!

This family trusted me when I said lets go play in the water! They didn’t hesitate when I asked them to do this session with me. Morgan always has the best dresses and I secretly want to take this dress and put it in my client closet for all of you to wear but I have been looking at a few of them on resale sights so hopefully soon! We went and played in the water in the morning light but I also think this spot would be beautiful in the evening time soon. With the light hitting the mountain! Here are just a few of my favorites (sorry for the over share I have a lot that are my favorites) along with a cute little film of the family that I put together!

Usery Mountain Regional Park: Banowetz Family

It was so much fun to get together with this family! I got to meet Brooke when I was doing a maternity shoot for her best friend and there is no bigger complement then being asked to do family pictures for her family when everyone was in town. We went with the desert and boy did the Arizona sunset show up. We also grabbed some head shots for the kids. Now a days I highly recommend it for your social media and LinkedIn sites I love shooting at Usery Mountain Regional Park and would be up for venturing out there a few more times this fall! Who’s in?

Queen Creek Wash: Yates Family Session

It was so fun to meet the Yates Family, we got to venture to new location and I am all about that. We went to Queen Creek Wash which was an interesting place. There are trees and a lot of sand there. It was so hot this night I think when we finished their session it was a 107 but everyone powered through and hopefully mom loved photos that we were able to get. I also love that we got to include Grandma in the images. Here are a few of my favorites from their session.

Why you want to book a Full Family Session!

First and #1 reason you get an entire hour with me!  What more of a reason do you need, but if you need more of a reason let me give you a few.  So as we sit and plan out your fall session if you are thinking about doing a mini session again let me stop you and give you some reasons for why you will want a full hour session.  If you are worried that your kids will not last a whole hour do not worry the session will be so laid back that it won’t even feel like an hour.

#2 – Not only do you get a full hour with me but you will also receive all hand picked edited images with a print release.  My mini sessions come with 10 edited images with the option to purchase more. 

#3 – I will help you fully style your session.  I will send you my pinterest board and we can go over colors and then I will find you some shopping links of clothes I think will look so good on your family.  I will pull from H&M, Target, and Amazon.  If you book a mini session I will help you with colors but I will not be able to personally style you.

#4 – You get options for more locations…I try to limit where I do my mini sessions as they are closer to my home.  If you do an hour session I will let you pick a place that might be a little bit further away.

So many good reasons to book a Full 1 hour session vs a Mini Session!!!  Here are some images from sessions that I have styled!  I feel like my help with styling takes a little bit of the stress of a photo session off.  I would like a session with me to be as easy and stress free as possible.

Here are some Photos from 2 sessions that I recently fully styled!

Quarantine Time

What are you all doing during this time? Who all is still under stay at home orders and who all have been let out? Who all are trying their hardest to help there kids with their school work? Luckily here our teachers are amazing and making it super easy on everyone while keeping the kids brains working. Our days in my house consist of Math work, and reading with spelling work. Then Taylor does a daily virtual call with her teacher and classmates to either do, Art, music, P.E., and Spanish class. Her teacher sends a daily story time for her. Then if we are feeling like it we hop on Art Hub and do our own drawing. Kyle has been kind of doing his own thing, I have him work on this program called Khan academy but other then that he has done a virtual class which he loved and watching his beloved power rangers. Luckily we only have one week of school left and then it is summer break which makes me a little sad because now I will have to find a new since of normalcy.

I on the other hand have been over here just working on some creative projects. Before the whole stay at home order went into place and right before all this stuff got super crazy I was able to squeeze in a creative session with a super sweet friend and her family. I did a film with them. This is something I wasn’t going to put out there till closer to fall but now is as good a time as any. I am so excited to announce that starting in August I am going to start offering film sessions. I will be offering different types of sessions…so stay turned for those. I will be announcing the different types of sessions this summer but here is a small dose of a couple of them Enjoy! And don’t worry I am still offering films with all my Newborn and Fresh 48 sessions.

We can do an outside family film where I capture film and photos for you!
One of my favorite things to do which mixes my multimedia journalist time with my mommy time together!
We can do a day in the life! This is a small glimpse!

How to use your Iphone Camera

So I am going to give you full transparety I started writing this blog before this pandimac so I have had to go thru and make some changes to help those Expecting Mamas and new Mamas. I want to help you take some gorgeous pictures of those sweet babies. So here are my tips.

  1. You can shoot in portrait mode if you have an Iphone but if you don’t know worries. I suggest though if you can change the F stop to change it from 1.4 or even 2.8 to around a 3 depending on how far away from baby you are going to be. This is a first and a must or your baby will look what like to call disconnect from what they are laying on our what is behind them.
  2. Find the light. Preferably a window. Natural light is the most amazing light, don’t worry if it is cloudy that will work in your favor because you will have some wonderful filtered light as clouds are the best filter. I like to put the baby in the I love placing baby in the hospital bassinet and I place it in front of the window. I will a lot of times place babies face facing the light. I will place mama and baby in front of the window. This is a perfect tip if you are wanting to grab some pictures of those babies at home. If there is some good light on the crib I love a wrapped baby in their crib it is a nice perspective.
  3. Grab all those little details the fingers, toes, ears, hair (if they have any), and their little belly button/umbilical cord. You also want to grab a wide shot of the post partum room or the delivery room so you can remember what it looked like during those first 48 hours.
  4. Set a timer and flip the screen so you can place your phone where you can see the screen and make sure to get the whole family in the picture.
  5. Make sure you also grab the reaction of siblings meeting their new baby brother or sister. I highly recommend you grabbing video of this. The wonderful thing about Iphones at least you can grab pictures while you are getting video just push the white button on the screen next to the record button.

How to Edit Your Iphone Pictures

If you want to get crazy you can edit you pictures! I use lightroom mobile but if you don’t have that you can edit them in your photos. Here is a quick video of how I edited a picture of my daughter. https://vimeo.com/405992858

I hope that these tips have helped or will help you guys when it comes to this special time in your life that just seems to be happening right in the middle of a pandemic.

Papago Park: Parrott Family

So first off how cute is this family.  This time is just some weird times for everyone.  We were able to squeeze in this session before things got super crazy.  Krista or as she is known in my house as Mrs. Parrott is just the best. The morning of this session she sent me the best message about how she couldn’t wait to capture how her family has bonded during this crazy time.  What an amazing way to look at this time. I have been having a hard time dealing with this. I miss seeing people I know and love. I haven’t given a hug to anyone for 3 weeks. That is a long time, I am a huger. Everyone better watch out when this is over I will be coming to everyone’s house for a  giant hug that includes this sweet woman.

This family was the cutest and came dressed perfect.  Look at how well all their outfits fit perfect together without being too matchy.  I had so much fun with them and I can’t wait till this virus dies off so we can get back to a new normal.

Newborn: Meet Baby Mayson

First off can we talk about how adorable this little family is. Big brother Jack greeted me immediately when I came into their home and he was just the sweetest. There there is Whitney and Nicholas such a sweet couple.  This sweet little man Mayson he was just so perfect and you can tell he is already use to his big brother. Whitney came to me by way of a past client/friend/teacher and I am so thankful she sent her my way. It is always fun to meet new people especially during such a special time as bringing a new member into the family. I was so excited to be able to provide Whitney with a short film of their session also I am telling you guys I am loving these films as much as you are because I wish I had captured more of these moments with my own kids. Here is a shorten film from her session along with some of my favorites from their session. Boy were there a lot to choose from.